Hi all!
Please can anyone give me some advice on which copy of ''the Hermetica'' I should buy/ i have been looking on Amazon,but there are several versions & I am baffled by them all. Some have around 160/190 pages ,whilst another has over 400!
I would be grateful for any help,
Thanks in advance,SG x.

Without a doubt get the Copenhaver version. It's accurately translated and has lots of notes. The Copenhaver version is mostly notes.

I have Scott's (4 volumes) too. It's not as well translated, but there's some good extra material. I wouldn't start here though.

The really short ones you are seeing are mostly early translations. Some of these are good reading, but not as accurately translated.

Stay away from the New Age ones. They're garbage, even as commentaries and guides. Also don't bother with the Kybalion. It's actually modern and not part of the Hermetic Corpus, and it's hardly even Hermetic in content.

Hi Mithra6,
thank you for you reply & good advice!! Ill look for this on amazon. My interest in obtaining the book is because I'm reading Olivia Barclay's HAR at the moment & she has a quote from it in there.It sounds fascinating.
SG x

I just wanted to second Mithra's advice. Go with the Copenhaver translation. It is the primary scholarly translation at this point, and it has a lot of footnotes and commentary.

The only thing that Scott's is good for at this point is that he includes some material from Stobeaus, which Copenhaver left out of his collection, but otherwise Scott is out of date because a new critical edition has been done since his was published.

There is another modern translation titled The Way of Hermes which reads pretty well and is relatively cheap, but it doesn't contain a translation of the Latin text known as the Asclepius. That is kind of problematic because the Asclepius has some important material in it. So, you are better off going with Copenhaver since his book includes it.

In the Netherlands Gilles Quispel is the man for the the translations of gnostic works and the Apocrypha. I'm not sure but I assume that he also translated some works in English.